García Lorca, Federico
The works of García Lorca, internationally recognized as Spain's most prominent lyric poet and dramatist of the twentieth century, are filled with thinly veiled homosexual motifs and themes.

Musical Theater
There has always been homosexual involvement in American musical theatre and a homosexual sensibility even in straight musicals, and recently the Broadway musical has welcomed openly homosexual themes and situations.

Michelangelo Buonarroti
Best known for his genius in art and architecture, Michelangelo was also an accomplished author of homoerotic poetry.

African-American Literature: Gay Male
The African-American gay male literary tradition consists of a substantial body of texts and includes some of the most gifted writers of the twentieth century.

Camp
Combining elements of incongruity, theatricality, and exaggeration, camp is a form of humor that helps homosexuals cope with a hostile environment.

Hughes, Langston
Langston Hughes, whose literary legacy is enormous and varied, was closeted, but homosexuality was an important influence on his literary imagination, and many of his poems may be read as gay texts.

Baldwin, James Arthur
James Baldwin, a pioneering figure in twentieth-century literature, wrote sustained and articulate challenges to American racism and mandatory heterosexuality.

Wilde, Oscar
Oscar Wilde is important both as an accomplished writer and as a symbolic figure who exemplified a way of being homosexual at a pivotal moment in the emergence of gay consciousness.

Humorist David Rakoff, best known for his contributions to Public Radio International's This American Life, died of cancer on August 9, 2012 in Manhattan. His mordant, self-mocking essays, published in such venues as New York Magazine, New York Times Magazine, GQ, and Outside, and collected in three books of essays, are reminiscent of those of David Sedaris, with whom he was closely associated.

Born in Montreal, Rakoff lived in the United States from 1982, when he moved to New York to attend Columbia University, until his death. He became an American citizen in 2003, though he retained his Canadian citizenship.

In 1992, Rakoff wrote a fan letter to David Sedaris after hearing him read his famous essay about working as a Christmas elf. They became friends and Rakoff directed a play written by Sedaris and his sister Amy and later acted in their plays. Through Sedaris, Rakoff met Ira Glass, who later would produce This American Life, where Rakoff achieved fame. His first essay for the program was "Christmas Freud," an account of Rakoff's job impersonating Sigmund Freud in the window of Barneys department store during the holidays.

Rakoff won two Lambda Literary Awards in the category of Humor for his collections, Fraud (2001) and Don't Get Too Comfortable (2005). A third collection of essays, Half Empty, was awarded the Thurber Prize for American Humor.

In addition to his radio essays, Rakoff also wrote screenplays and performed as a film, television, and stage actor.

He is survived by his parents, a brother, and a sister.

In the video below, Rakoff reads an essay from Don't Get Too Comfortable

In the following video, Rakoff discusses his work, including his diagnosis with cancer, with Canada's Xtra!